My view on Tabletop Games, home of the JTRPodcast

Gameday First Play – Pit

In this loud, real-time trading game, players are given the task of cornering the market in one type of commodity. There are as many suits as there are players, and all the cards are dealt out at the start of each round. When the trading begins, players offer sets of cards to each other in the hopes of completing a set for themselves. If you’re successful, you ring the (optional)bell and yell out, “Corner on wheat!” (or whatever your commodity is). You then score points depending on which it was – some are more valuable than others.

So as the blurb says there is one set of commodities for each player and each commodity has 9 cards. These are shuffled and 9 cards are dealt out to each player.

Once everyone has sorted their hand someone says “Shout it out!”.

Then you take a number of identical cards in your hand and let people know how many you’re trading. For example if you don’t want the 3 Diamonds cards in your hand you’ll say “Trading 3, Trading 3” until someone else offers 3 cards to trade. Then you readjust your hand, pick another set and go again.

This continues until someone gets 9 cards in their hand of one commodity at which point they slap their hand on the table and shout “pit”. They win and score points equal to the value of that commodity.

This continues until someone scores 500 points.

Very fun game, looking forward to playing it with the full 8 players and the Bear and Bull card.